


unlike the papers

by LiliaFax



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Gen, Non-Sgrub AU, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Propaganda, Revolution, dystopian au, the jades rebelled
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-10
Updated: 2013-08-10
Packaged: 2017-12-23 01:44:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/920530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiliaFax/pseuds/LiliaFax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a universe where the Jadebloods rebelled against the Empire, everything has changed. Jades are the enemy. Eridan Ampora knows this; he has strived to be a model citizen the Alternian Empire. However, lately he's been questioning what he's been told. Perhaps the Empire isn't exactly right. After all, they say that one of the only trolls he can really trust is a traitor and deserves to be culled.</p><p>Kanaya has never led him wrong before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	unlike the papers

**Author's Note:**

> This was an entry I made for the HSWC Round 1 that we ended up not using. I fixed a few things and am posting it up, despite the fact that I think it's to short and that I didn't really develop my universe at all. Also I think there are still some tense changes around there, despite my best efforts. I apologize to the world. Also apologies for the shitty title. And shitty summary. And shitty everything, I apologize for everything omg.
> 
> Maybe I'll develop this into an actual multi-part AU. After I finish part 2 to the other fic I have sitting here. See what Karkat is doing in all this... hm, I'm intrigued.

The air in the west district smells stale and salty, and tickles at Eridan’s nose. He pulls his scarf up over his face and trudges forward, ignoring the trolls that pass by. They all look like something the meowbeast dragged in, all dirt and ragged edges, dull horns and sharply angry eyes. This is the district for the downtrodden, for those who the forced city life has hurt the most.  
  
Eridan wonders what Kan was thinking making this their meeting place. Surely they could meet outside the city so he wouldn’t have to go through a place that made his skin crawl and his hair stand on edge. But she had insisted on this particular bar, in this particular section of the Imperial City. And he was completely subject to all of her requests.  
  
He remembers exactly what her last messages to him were  
  
 _GA: Really Eridan I Assure You I Would Not Send You Somewhere That I Did Not Have The Absolute Faith You Could Handle_  
 _GA: How Many Times Do I Have To Tell You_  
 _GA: Us Jade Bloods Are Not Actually Particularly Prone To Lying Or All Seething For The Blood Of Seadwellers_  
 _GA: Dont Believe What The Media Tells You Eridan_  
 _GA: I Do Want To Meet You_  
 _CA: i do too kan_  
 _CA: but wwhat if someone sees me go there_  
 _GA: You Are Such A Melodrama Monarch Arent You_  
  
“Hey, seascum, why don’t you come over here and have a good time,” a voice whispers dangerously close to Eridan’s aural fins.

 

A grungy looking troll grabs Eridan’s shoulder to which he yelps and jabs his elbow back. The troll grunts and stumbles back, spitting out curses. Eridan hisses softly, flaring his fins. He’s young, an easy target for any near-adults or, god forbid, actual adults who have been left behind by conscription. Ever since the rebellion, more and more of those crawl around the edges of Alternia, taking advantage of the crumbling infrastructure and taking juvenile trolls to do horrible things with. Eridan knows of at least two trolls from his old FLARPing group that suddenly went missing, with only reports of adult trolls in the area and nearly destroyed hives behind them. Eridan had claimed both of their lusii with a grimace on his face, fear creeping on him all the while.  
  
He’s almost seven sweeps now- still a whole two sweeps from his own conscription. That knowledge tears at him something awful. He has two sweeps to get back into Fef’s good graces and come up with a plan to harness the ongoing jade-blood rebellion to put Fef on the throne. Although, perhaps his so-called friends already have a plan in motion with them, and he’s just been left out of the loop. It wouldn’t be the first time.  
  
Eridan growls lowly thinking of them and what all happened nearly a sweep ago. But he tells himself he will not get worked up about Fef or Vris or any of that. He’s going to go meet the girl he’s been talking with forever, who Kar says is actually really nice, and he’s not going to fuck it up by dwelling on the past. At least Kan trusts him enough to tell him that she’s a jade-blood and trust that he won’t turn on her. Young jade-bloods like her aren’t being rounded up, yet, but she’s told you on sleep-deprived late days that she sometimes worries about it.   
  
The bar he’s supposed to be meeting Kan in is patched up on the front, but still relatively clean and well spoken for. A rusted sign swings easily by the storefront and reads  _The Lazy Tealblood_. The name sounds like something out of Eridan’s adventure novels, but at least the paint isn’t pealing, and lightbulbs aren’t missing. In fact, the sign looks almost new, aside from the rust. Eridan decides he’s probably not going to be mugged and pulls the door open.  
  
The inside of the bar is equally clean, albeit pretty low-lit. The edges of the bar are lined with booths, except where interrupted by a gated-off staircase and the actual bar. Paintings and other relics of Alternian life line the walls on both low and high shelves and the only light seems to be coming from light fixtures on and above tables and booths. A tallish troll with horns that swoop to encircle their head leans at the bar and looks at Eridan, waiting and daring him to come in.  
  
Eridan stalks up to the bar, scanning around for someone sitting alone. There are indeed other trolls sitting at the various booths and tables, but the building isn’t super busy. The noise level is comfortable- not so quiet that everyone could hear every conversation, but not so loud that you have to yell to be heard. Eridan can see why Kan picked this place to meet. He feels a little out-of-place though, as the whole thing has a decidedly mid-blood feel to it. The domesticity of it is strange to him. The high-blood institutions he found himself in as a young troll were all stiff in atmosphere and you always had to watch out in case someone tried to stab you in the back.  
  
He finds her sitting at a booth in the corner. At least, he assumes it’s her, all done up in a lime-green dress and fiddling with a glass on the booth table. She looks just as classy, for lack of a better word, as her text would imply. Her hair is neatly combed around her horns, which shine in the light from the hanging lamp. Her dress is neat and her eyes look clear and healthy.   
  
She does look intimidating, but not in the way the posters and books and messages all say.   
  
Eridan approaches her, adjusting his scarf and cape so that they sit better on his shoulders. “Um, Kanaya?”  
  
She looks up and raises her eyebrows, green-painted lips forming a small “o”.  
  
“Eridan?”  
  
He nods, suddenly all jitters and nerves, and slides into the seat opposite her. She smiles and shifts around in her seat, pulling her hands down to her lap. Eridan taps his toes, she bites her lip.   
  
Meeting her in-person is a lot scarier than he thought it would be.  
  
The words of his school-feeding and the voices of the Propagajournalists echo in his head. Don’t trust her, she’s going to eat you alive, suck you dry and leave you to burn in the sun. It’s an effort to try and ignore them and not run away from the troll sitting in-front of him, looking just like an Imperial poster.  
  
“This is very strange, isn’t it? I mean, first meetings always are, but I thought that since we’ve shared so much online we wouldn’t be having nearly the same magnitude of a problem as I’ve had meeting other trolls,” she says, her words tumble out of her mouth quickly, like she’s forcing herself to fill the silence and is scared to say the wrong thing. It’s… so like the Kan that Eridan knows and has nurtured a huge palecrush on for sweeps and not at all like the scary manipulations he’s heard of.  
  
“Yeah. I’m happy to meet you, Kan, though,” Eridan says.  
  
“The feeling is mutual,” she replies and tilts her head a little, shaking a small lock of hair out of place and onto her forehead. “I must say, I knew you would be prone to obnoxious clothing, but I didn’t anticipate the, erm, cape.”  
  
Eridan jolts back and grabs his cape protectively. “My cape is a symbol of my royal status and my ancestor wore one like this, I’ll have you know. It’s very important that I wear this, so that everyone knows to stay back.”  
  
Kanaya laughs at that. Eridan stares, a little baffled by the response. Normally when he brings up his royalty or his ancestor to her, she replies by telling him that he’s being stupid again or asking him why he is so obsessed with his ancestor. (Looking back, some of those conversations about his hero worship and the role of the Empire in that, coming to his own self-esteem issues and her issues with her ancestor were pretty damn pale, but Eridan likes to ignore that). But she sits and laughs and laughs. She’s beautiful like this, the light casting shadows on her face, highlighting her nose and the curve of her lips. Her shoulders shake and Eridan wants to put his arms around those shoulders and hug her tight (what).  
  
“I’m sorry. I just,” she clears her throat, as her voice almost starts to become chocked. “I just was so worried about this. I knew you were a highblood and I know what the Empire says about us. My caste, I mean. I didn’t know if you were going to be a bigot or something. But you are just as ridiculous as I thought you would be. Seriously, a cape in your blood color, Eridan? And a scarf?”  
  
He tries to be indignant about her jab at his attire, but her words were so vulnerable that Eridan’s blood-pusher aches and he can’t bring up his normal ire. He reaches across the table and takes her hand, which has returned to messing with her glass. She jolts a little, but doesn’t pull away, and Eridan takes that as a sign to keep going.  
  
“Kan. I’m trying to be a better troll. Remember when I said those really stupid things when we were six-sweeps old? That the Empire was right about you jade-bloods. I’ve grown up a lot since then, I think. You made me think. You made me think about what I thought was real. I’m so,” he pauses, looking for the right word. “I’m so grateful that I met you online that day. I was a real asshat back then, so, thanks for making me not an asshat.”  
  
“If I recall correctly, you called me, among other things, a ‘useless wwaste of the mothergrub’s effort’ and ‘fuckin cullbait’.” She imitates his accent near perfectly while she says those things and Eridan sinks back, feeling his earfins heat up.  
  
“Goood, did you have to bring that up. I was six and stupid, you know that.”  
  
She smirks and paps him on the cheek. Eridan flushes harder.  
  
“Kan, oh my god, you can’t just pap a guy without warning. That’s completely inappropriate.”  
  
“I apologize. I simply don’t want a famous ‘Ampora Melt-Down’ here.” She’s snarking back with him, like they are normal and nothing weird is going on.  
  
If Eridan is having any doubts about joining the Jade Rebellion, this meeting with Kanaya erases them all. With every word she says, and every comment about his hair (“I’m telling you, Kan, it’s natural, and I like it like this”) and his clothes (“You know what, fuck you, Kan. Fuck you, I’m not changing my style for anyone”), Eridan finds himself wanting more and more to help her and all trolls like her. He would have to talk to Fef again, no matter how much it hurt. It’s a bit like clearing through a bad patch of sea fog, but he’s starting to see how awful he was to her. The thought of talking to her again is scary but he has to do it. For Kanaya.

 

He looks at her and wonders a little at how she managed to completely change him, all while dealing with her own shit. Eridan can only see that she’s a truly remarkable young troll.  
  
They leave the bar after the bartender tells them they had to hurry up to miss the rising sun. They hug awkwardly on the front steps before going their separate ways. In home, snuggled in his recouperacoon, Eridan keeps returning to everything she said, the way she said it, the way her teeth slipped over her lips while she talked. That day, he sleeps better than he has since Fef left him.  
  
\---  
\--caligulasAquarium [CA] started trolling grimAuxilatrix [GA]\--  
CA: hey kan  
CA: are you evven up right now   
CA: i hope you are   
CA: wwell i wwanted to say that i had a really great time yesterday  
CA: it wwas awwesome  
CA: wwe should do it again   
CA: im gonna message fef now  
CA: wwish me luck  
CA: oh  
CA: i hope you are okay wwith this but  
CA: fuck this is hard  
CA: wwell  
CA: <>  
  
\--caligulasAquarium [CA] has ceased trolling grimAuxiliatrix [GA]—  
  
GA: …  
GA: <>


End file.
